This was the first big Brazilian drama that HBO worked on, and it’s a five-episode miniseries that lasts almost five hours in total. It’s a really emotional and political story set in Rio de Janeiro during the late 1980s, and it does a great job of showing what that era felt like while the country was dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis. Since the world feels so divided today, the show is a beautiful reminder of how queer people can find power by standing together when things are hard. The story is actually based on real things that happened, specifically about flight attendants who smuggled AIDS medicine from the US into Brazil in the 80s. It works as both a history drama and a strong political message. The show is mostly about three people: Nando, his best friend Lea (they both work as flight attendants for Fly Brasil), and Raul, who is a performer and an activist. A lot of the story happens at a club called Paradise, which was one of the few open gay clubs back in the 80s. Nando is a h...
The story has 2 parallel tracks running, whose characters occasionally cross paths. In the first we have Aliki and Andreas, a couple in their thirties, who have lost their 4 year daughter in an accident. They are leading a very depressive and mundane life which is putting their married life at risk. I got the impression that sometimes they wanted another child but other times they didn’t. Parallel , we meet Marios, a teacher in his twenties living with his mother. He is gay and satisfies his sexual urges with random hook-ups, but things change when he meets a young choreographer in his swimming club, but he is too scared to fall for him, because he doesn’t know what future will hold for him. Back to the couple, the wife gets fascinated by a sudden miracle of statue of Virgin Mary shedding tears and hopes that soon a miracle will happening their life.
There is no proper ending to the film, because when Aliki leaves her husband, I am not sure if thats for good or she wants to come back. Does she blame her husband for it? Why is Marios afraid of committing to the guy. How much does he really care about his mother finding out the truth about him? Many such questions and acts of the individuals are left unanswered. Acting by the actors is decent but overall the direction is quite poor. The scenes look very well rehearsed. And to be honest, there wasn’t much sense behind the plot. The only positive I can think of is that in society like Cyprus, it wasn’t probably easy to make a film with almost 50% of it focussing on a gay issue.
Its a very below average film from story, direction point of view. Something that would have been better as a short TV show episode. (3/10)
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